Initiating Group June Meeting minutes

[George Latham]

Initiating Group Meeting Minutes – 28/6/11

 

Present – Careen, David, Nadezhda, Michael, Elaine, Viv

Apologies – Chris and John

 

• We discussed venues for the AGM.  We haven’t been able to arrange a date and film through the Lexi.  Other venues discussed were the Tin Tabernacle, The Constitution Club, St Anne’s Church and the Paradise Pub.  The Tin Tabernacle is a possible future venue, but we haven’t been able to arrange this in time.  Father Fergus has offered to host us at St Anne’s on Mon 18^th July or Wed 20^th July – but we need to discuss to see if it is practical for showing a film when light outside. Careen is investigating the Paradise. Plan is to have the official business of the AGM, followed by a film showing (the Economics of Happiness), and then food and drinks (plus games!)
• Finance.  David talked us through the financial position, which is healthy in the short term, with over £9,000 in our account.   We have been successful to date in stretching our resources further than originally expected, and hope to continue to do so.  In many cases, such as draught busting or harvest festival, we have been able to use our resources as a float or working capital, whilst the events themselves have been breakeven or even in profit.
• Community Allotments.  The community allotments at 5-ways, William Dunbar, Queens Park, Moishe House and Kilburn Station are all going really well, but could do with more support and volunteers.  Signs by each site are useful for telling people when gardening clubs meet, and the group is coming together to support each other.  George is write a blog post re Queens Park allotment for the Park Life blog. 
• Viv Stein attended to talk about building links between Transition Kensal to Kilburn and Brent’s Climate Change Strategy, Brent Friends of the Earth, and Brent Campaign against Climate Change.  We should try to make sure that Brent Sustainability Forum is used to promote major events such as the Harvest Festival or the AGM, for draught busting and for distribution of newsletters. Viv is going to make sure that Marion Hoffman and Helen Entwhistle are aware of the regular groups meetings that we have that they could attend.
• We also talked with Viv about building links with the new Transition Willesden Green initiative, which is getting off to a really good start.
• Harvest Festival.  George is organising the Festival (9 Oct) and Careen is organising the Supper (15 Oct). First planning meeting for the Festival is 11^th July.
• We discussed how to bring Transition themes into the Harvest Supper.  General agreement that we would do more of a focus on what we have been achieving locally this year (as opposed to using someone like NEF as in last year).  Suggested using the display boards to show what has been happening in various groups – Bees, Allotments, Food skills, Draught Busting etc – and a very short presentation from each after supper.
• Various things talked about for the festival – one good idea was inviting the Brondesbury Poetry group who were a great success at the Book Festival.
• The new Communications Group met on 27^th June, and Viv reported on progress as both John and Chris were unable to attend the initiating meeting.
• We discussed Queens Park day.  Elaine is going to look into having our stall next to Queens Park Community School’s so that we could have the pedal-powered phone charger between us.
• QPCS summer fair is 9 July and will be the first outing for the pedal-powered phone charger.
• Kilburn Festival.  We were going to share a stall with the new Transition West Hampstead for the Kilburn Festival. However, it seems that we would have to do most of the organisation for this and so we are abandoning the idea as we don’t have the resources available.
• We’d like to have a separate meeting to discuss our purpose in a longer term sense and what we hope to achieve.  We’ve thought of asking a contact of Careen’s (Pat) or possibly Jane Edwards to facilitate this.
• Michael offered to help the Buildings and Energy group with their planned energy saving leaflet as he has some experience in this area.  We also discussed getting a local solar installation group (Joju) to run a stall at the Harvest Festival.